In the Name of the Rose and the Olive

The new year brings a baby boomette under the sign of Capricorn, and an onslaught of entrants for the Annual Unfortunate Names Contest, otherwise known as birth announcements.

According to Service Alberta’s most recent top-names list, Brooklyn is coming on strong, scoring ninth place in 2011. Unfortunately, the people recording vital statistics offer no insight into why any Albertan would name a child after New York’s hipster borough. It’s a girl’s name, which left me wondering if soon we’ll see some masculine variation based on Brooklyn neighbourhoods—Dumbo, say, or Red Hook. Bed-Stuy has a nice ring to it.

But as it tends to be girls who suffer most in the name game, I won’t hold my breath. Just consider Nevaeh, a popular girl’s name in the U.S. that is making inroads here. It sounds like a hand cream but it’s actually heaven spelled backwards. I thought it was a teasing nickname the first time I heard it, since the kid in question really was the opposite of heaven. But the mother assured me it was emblazoned on the poor little mite’s birth certificate. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

Although the multicultural nature of our nation ensures that unusual names are no longer mock-worthy in schoolyards—thank nevaeh for small mercies—I’m not so sure their owners won’t be mocked as adults. As any fiction writer can tell you, the naming of a character signals a multitude of things, and you may well be attributing false attitudes, beliefs and history to your child that could prove a handicap.

The first time it struck me that names could have serious consequences was when I was 18 and bumped into a high-school friend who had mysteriously disappeared before graduation. There she was, eight months’ pregnant and still single, much to the annoyance of her parents. She was burbling about potential baby names and leaning towards the then-unusual Chelsea. I asked if she was celebrating the London neighbourhood or the football team. “If a little brother comes along you could call him Brixton!” I suggested, getting into the spirit of the thing as only a tactless teenager can. (And if there’s a Brixton in his 20s out there, I am so, so sorry.)

I couldn’t resist asking where she’d heard the name and it turned out that while the rest of us were cursing calculus, she’d become a soap-

opera addict and had found a rich mine of heretofore unheard-of monikers. “You want your kid’s name to commemorate The Young and the Restless?” I blurted. It was weirdly appropriate, but I couldn’t imagine how it would go over at family dinners. Of course, the joke was on me because she was on the cutting edge of what would later become known as the soaps trend in baby naming. If you are an Ashley, a Brittany or a Tiffany, there’s a good chance your parents had a thing for daytime dramas featuring bizarre plots and wooden acting.

So influential were soaps in their heyday that many a child was stuck with a handle likely to embarrass her as an adult. As the Destinys and Brandys started piling up, people began making jokes about adding tassles to the onesies at baby showers. So one of my more practical pals proposed a baby-naming test to ensure we wouldn’t accidentally humiliate future daughters. “See how that name sounds with ‘Madame Justice’ in front of it,” she advised. She eventually had two sons, but it strikes me that her guideline is still the gold standard for preventing naming disasters. Just consider “Madame Justice Blue Ivy.” Exactly. (What were Beyonce and Jay-Z thinking?)

Naming babies was once a matter of family as much as fashion, but somewhere along the line it became the equivalent of a style accessory. Sociologists theorize that it has to do with the modern era valuing individuals more than institutions, and so naming children became a matter of personal taste (or lack thereof).

Those who call for laws against bad taste will appreciate Iceland’s strict naming legislation, which includes lists of about 1,800 approved names for each sex. They fit grammar and pronunciation rules (and no doubt prevent the randomly sprinkled apostrophes that seem to be all the rage). The point is to protect children from embarrassment. Parents have to apply for permission to get something dodgy like Ra’Lae on a birth certificate. The system, while admirable, is not flawless. Currently, Blaer Bjarkardottir, 15, is suing to use her given name—which means “light breeze”—after her parents were inexplicably denied the right to call her that officially. In the meantime she is identified as “Stulka,” which means girl. Reading news stories about her plight, I was sure some trendsetting parent (probably in Brooklyn) would spot Stulka as an alternative to the now passé Elle.

I blame celebrities for opening the floodgates on bestowing names that will add to the kid’s future therapy bill. Nicolas Cage called his son Kal-El. Yes, just like Superman. Pop star Bob Geldof may be a philanthropist but he gave his kids mighty uncharitable names: Fifi Trixibelle, Peaches Honeyblossom, Pixie and Tiger Lily. And Alicia Silverstone has a son called Bear Blu. You could call it whimsical; I call it child abuse. As did Peaches Geldof who, at 16, publicly called for celebs to stop giving their kids silly names.

Ironically, this enthusiasm for unusual names isn’t about individuality, it’s about fitting in, according to American sociologist Philip Cohen. He wrote about the ever-waning enthusiasm for the name Mary in December’s Atlantic magazine, where he notes that although Mary was the American chart-topper for centuries it has seen a 94-per-cent drop in popularity since 1961. That year, more than 47,000 babes were given the name. “Conformity to tradition has been replaced by conformity to individuality,” Cohen writes.

This may explain why those who move in Upstairs circles have taken to giving their offspring Downstairs names. About 10 years ago, posh daycares began sounding like the training grounds for 19th-century servants, as Ruby, Violet, Abigail, Daisy and Rose started mixing it up in the sandbox. Celebrities have picked up on this trend, and last fall Drew Barrymore gave birth to an “Olive,” which just screams scullery maid, but at least she’s not a Blue Olive.

Still, there’s some charm to those simple names, and their resurgence raises hopes that the era of pretentious Addisons and Madisons may soon give way to the return of Mary. Think about it: Mary was a name for servants as well as royalty, and it celebrates the elegantly dressed Lady Mary on TV’s hit soap Downton Abbey. Give it the Irish spelling, Maire, and it hits the trendy-name trifecta without any reference to real estate.

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